Godzilla vs Cthulhu
by C. L. Werner
Summary: The awesome power of H. P. Lovecraft's Great Old Ones battles the atomic fury of Japan's most terrible kaiju.
1. Default Chapter

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Godzilla vs. Cthulhu

By C. L. Werner

I

The waters of the Bering Sea boiled into life as a huge form, like a black mountain rising from the ocean floor, broke the surface. Black scales glistened in the setting sun as red eyes glared at the horizon. Reptilian lips curled in a snarl and a high-pitched shriek rolled across the blue waves. The surface of the sea was again broken as the titanic shape returned to the depths.

Hundreds of miles away, a man stared in horror at the monitor screen before him. He removed his glasses and rubbed his eyes, unwilling to believe the information being conveyed to him by the computer. With almost complete hysteria, he screamed for his supervisor. An uniformed man, a colonel in the Japanese Self-Defense Force, followed the alerted technician to the frightened man's consul. The colonel followed the technician's gaze, cursing under his breath as he noted the blinking blue light that gleamed like a harbinger of doom upon the CGI rendered map.

"He comes again", the colonel said with somber gravity. "Notify the UNGCC…and the papers. Let the people prepare as well as they can." The colonel's adjutant raced away to follow his superior's command. He did not see the tear that fell from the colonel's eye as the officer watched the blue light head slowly, deliberately, for Japan.

My name is Ryu Yamamoto. I am a police officer, at the time of this narrative, a member of the Tokyo police department. It is a strange story that I have to tell, a story of old gods and new gods. It is a story that haunts me, poisons my life. Upon an accursed shore of an accursed land, I witnessed what will be the end of man's world and know that ending to be inevitable and unavoidable. I do not know if we shall endure for an hour or a century, the one blessed veil of ignorance left to blind my eyes. No, there is one other unknown, whether we shall perish before old gods or new.

It began when my superior gave me an important undercover mission. As I closed the door of the briefing room behind me, the nature of my assignment was revealed to me – I was to infiltrate "The Watchers on the Shore", a cult of religious fanatics who worshipped an ancient sea god and had gained considerable notoriety in the media for their eccentric dogma, immoral teachings, and the suspected kidnapping and brainwashing used to increase their congregations. In recent months, the cult had been spreading like a cancer throughout the Tokyo waterfront and the cult members themselves becoming increasingly erratic and violent in their behavior. There had been several near-riots caused by mass bodies of the cultists demonstrating outside what they called "the false temples of delusion" – Shinto shrines, Buddhist temples, and Christian churches. Then there was the "Green Scourge" incident when all the fish taken from Tokyo Bay seemed to rot as soon as they were removed from the water. The watchers had taken credit for that incident, a reprisal for Japan's refusal to listen to the "truth". Although their claim had been publicly dismissed as preposterous, privately the government was concerned that the cult may have poisoned the bay with some new chemical they had developed.

Now, it was time to act.

I would pose as an initiate to the cult's bizarre faith and seek to learn what was going on within the secretive group. I was especially to seek the confidence of Akira Natanaka himself, the high priest of the Watchers, the "Unclosing Eye", their living prophet. This would be no mean feat. Others had gone before me and failed.

I had been a Watcher for seven months and still my mind trembled at what had happened to the others who had infiltrated the cult. Dead, one and all, their bodies found bloated and maimed floating far out at sea, never with a shred of evidence to link their unknown murderers with the cult. 

I was reflecting upon this when a shaven-headed man clad in a green robe with a golden octopus embroidered upon the chest, the garb of the watchers' priesthood, entered my small, cell-like room. He bowed to me and motioned for me to follow him.

I was being granted a private audience with Akira Natanaka, the Unclosing Eye.

II

"Hokkaido." The name left the seated general's lips less speech than hiss. Commander Aso of the UNGCC ran a hand through his graying hair.

"There can be no doubt about it. Godzilla is following a direct path to Japan. Hokkaido lies directly in his path", the colonel sighed loudly. "The Super X-3 is months from completion. We have nothing to fight him with, no hope of driving him off."

"All those people," Commander Aso pounded the table before him in impotent fury.

"We have already scrambled two wings of fighters and a squadron of maser jets to try and halt his advance," stated the aged representative of the Japanese air command, his voice lacking any manner of conviction.

"Will Hokkaido be cleared in time?" asked the Commander of the colonel who had brought him the news of the monster's approach.

"We are evacuating the city even now, but we estimate that only twenty-five percent of the populace will be removed to a safe distance by the time that he arrives." Commander Aso clutched at his temples, trying to think.

"Project Raptor," he said at last, turning toward the air command representative. "Is Project Raptor ready?"

"Yes, but the Super X-3 is not."

"I want the sonic transmitter removed from the Super X-3 and placed onboard the fastest helicopter the air command has." Commander Aso saluted the general from the air command as the aged officer departed to carry out his orders. The puzzled colonel spoke after the general had left the room.

"What is this sonic transmitter?" he asked.

"A device invented by Professor Hayashida when Godzilla reappeared in 1984. It emits a signal which affects Godzilla in a manner similar to the way a dog whistle works. I don't pretend to understand how it works and I know that it is not very reliable a device. We have used it on Godzilla many times since the Mt. Mihara operation with little effect.

"I also know that it is Hokkaido's only hope," the Commander added.

* * * * *

I could feel the sweat upon my palms as the silent priest led me down the candle-lit halls of the temple. Once it had been Buddhist, now it played host to an obscene faith, the hideous conspiracy that I had infiltrated. I was a sane man alone among the denizens of a mad house. I was going to see Akira Natanaka, the Unclosing Eye, head lunatic. Such a meeting was the ultimate privilege for the frenzied members of Natanaka's cult. "See Natanaka and die" the philosophy of the cultists, for having seen their living prophet they could imagine no greater moment in their twisted lives. Some did indeed kill themselves after a private audience with the high priest.

"See Natanaka and die." Those words chilled my being. Why was I being allowed an audience with the Unclosing Eye? Perhaps the madmen about me had recognized my sanity, had realized that I was not one of them.

But there were others among the watchers on the Shore who wore only the cloak of the cultist while pursuing their own agendas and they had not been discovered.

There was Miss Kumi Odaka, a beautiful young woman, a university student before circumstance caused her to become one of Natanaka's minions. I had gained her confidence soon after my arrival. She perhaps sensed the difference between myself and the true cultists, for she risked much confiding in me. Kumi needed the strength and support of someone else for her own was nearly spent, and she needed a friend. Kumi had joined the Watchers on the Shore only after her brother Kenji had been inducted into its crazed ranks. The brother refused to listen to his parents, his family, decrying them as "heretics blinded by their own ignorance." Kumi had joined the cult hoping that as one of the "enlightened" she would be listened to by Kenji and be able to open his eyes to the insanity of Natanaka's cult. Thus far she had succeeded only in terrifying herself by witnessing the cult's strange rituals and experiencing the horrible dreams which afflicted all those who slept in the cult's temples and were called "the sacred gift" by Natanaka's priests.

I did not realize at first how much we meant to each other, how much we depended upon one another's strength to forget our fears of discovery. Then, to my problems was added a new one - concern for Miss Kumi Odaka, the woman I now knew I loved.

Take Hidemasa introduced himself to me the day after I joined the cult. His introduction came to me in a darkened corridor where none could see or hear us. He told me my name and my reason for being in the Watchers on the Shore. He then told me to stay out of his way and not to alert my superiors until I had notified him. Fearful that I had been discovered, I demanded to know who he himself was and why he wasn't reporting me to Natanaka. Hidemasa grabbed hold of me and slammed me into the corridor wall. He informed me that I was in no position to demand anything of him. He was a covert operative of the American DOD. His mission was his own business. If I interfered, the cult would learn about me as quickly as the DOD had.

These then were my fellow masquers, a frightened woman and an American spy who would be only too happy to give my life to the Watchers should it be convenient. Arrayed against us were two thousand religious maniacs, five hundred of them housed in this waterfront temple. Our weapon was trickery, theirs a fanatical devotion to Akira Natanaka and the mysterious "Lord of Dreams" which was his god.

Akira Natanaka. I had read the file on him before infiltrating the cult. He had been a marine in the Imperial Japanese Navy, the sole survivor from a battalion that had been dispatched to construct an airfield upon a small island in the Mid-Pacific. Military records suggested that the battalion had fallen victim to a submarine attack but Natanaka offered a very different explanation. They had landed upon the island and found the remains of a lost civilization. Many of the soldiers died, how Natanaka would not say except to call them "faithless". The others perished when the island sank "back into the deeps from which it came for the time was not right for it to remain in the world of men". Natanaka, whatever the truth of his comrades' destruction, was rescued from the sea by a Dutch ship and spent the war in an Australian POW camp. After the war, Natanaka traveled to China where "I sought those who would give meaning to the sights I saw upon the island before it returned to the great deeps." It was in 1973 when he took leave of his mysterious Chinese monks and returned to Japan, founding his Watchers on the Shore first in the small fishing village of Moshida in northern Japan, a place whose people were considered pariahs by their neighbors and generally despised by all who knew of the village's existence. From Moshida, like the tentacles of an octopus, the cult had spread to Oneda, Osaka, and Tokyo. Now temples were appearing in Thailand, Taiwan and Korea with no end in sight.

Natanaka's second at the Tokyo temple was Goro, a hulking brute from Moshida village. A sadist with the face of a mythical Oni, his huge, round bulging eyes and wide, chinless mouth were said to be common marks of the Moshida villagers, the stamp of their degeneracy.

Natanaka's shadow was another native of Moshida, a nameless, voiceless dwarf whom I yet refer to as _Bakemono_ - the Goblin. He wore only black, black robes and black gloves and a black mask to hide the lower half of his face. What flesh did reveal itself was painted like the face of a Kabuki dancer and his eyes were bloodshot saucers which never left the face of those who stood before his master.

The Goblin, he would be there too, I reflected as the priest leading me opened the double-doors of bamboo that separated me from the audience chamber of the Unclosing Eye.

I closed my eyes and prayed to my ancestors as a stench of brine and fish fled from Natanaka's chamber.

"Enter, my child," rasped an ancient voice in a sinisterly soothing tone. I knew it to be the voice of Akira Natanaka.

The bamboo doors closed behind me.


	2. Part Two

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Godzilla vs. Cthulhu

By C. L. Werner

III

The last of the maser jets plummeted from the heavens. Refusing to bail out, the pilot struggled to steer the plane away from the city below. The jet crashed into a squat tenement building, destroying one corner in a terrific explosion and leaving the rest of the building in flame. The plane's destroyer growled in satisfaction, his remarkable body already repairing the damage inflicted upon it by the weapons of the advanced jet fighters.

Ahead of Godzilla, a company of maser tanks assembled upon the waterfront, the last feeble line of defense to halt the behemoth's advance upon the sprawling metropolis of Hokkaido. For a tense moment, Godzilla stopped; eyeing the formations of armor in silence as the soldiers before him steeled themselves for the coming attack. At once, there was a blinding play of light over the waters of the bay as the maser tanks and Godzilla each responded to the other's challenge. Godzilla's atomic holocaust engulfed the right flank of the tank formation, causing steel to boil and flesh to vaporize. Determined to buy as much time for the fleeing citizens as they could, the tanks held their ground, continuing to fire upon the reptile as Godzilla's ray proceeded down their battle line until the last tank on the left flank had been turned into a lump of molten steel.

Godzilla stepped onto the shore. Hokkaido lay before him and the city trembled.

*****

Akira Natanaka was an old man, over ninety, his face a mass of wrinkles, his skin shriveled and pale, almost leprous where it was not discolored by liver spots. The hair that fell from his scalp in long individual strands was the shade of frost and his eyes were the clouded orbs of an eater of opium… or a rabid dog. He wore a jade robe which seemed to glow with a green light in the gloom of the chamber. Upon his chest was the sigil of a golden octopus with a single, unlidded eye. His withered face split into a smile as he saw me, revealing irregular ranks of rotten and yellow teeth. At his side, standing beside the bamboo throne of Natanaka, the silent Goblin looked on, his saucer eyes piercing me like an arrow.

"You have kept a secret from me," the ancient priest cackled with glee. His filmy eyes met mine and his smile softened. The Goblin took a step closer toward me. I fought down the urge to flee the dark chamber with its somber tapestries and its withered sorcerer. If I was to die let it be like a man. Let it be with honor.

"How long have you been in love with Miss Odaka?" the old priest hissed mirthfully. I stared at him in bewilderment, a new terror filling me.

"Did you think that I did not know? I, the Unclosing Eye?" he was breathing heavily, his smile softening yet more. "I know the hearts of my children. You have no fear which has not made me tremble or passion which has not made me rejoice. As your heart is the domicile of our master, so too is it my domain. In the night we share HIS dreams and make them our own." The sinisterly soothing quality had returned to his voice and as I looked into his lifeless eyes, I thought of a bird standing before a serpent. Desperately I fought down an insane desire to confess to the seated wraith and tore my eyes from his.

"You are not alone. Goro wishes her for himself. He is a wicked man, one of the fallen whose fall is all the worse because he was exalted. The madness of pride races through his blood, for his is a noble people and an ancient heritage. He wishes my power, to become the Unclosing Eye. He cares not what is the will of the Lord of Dreams, only the lusts of Goro concern him. Even as we speak, he steals to the chamber of Miss Odaka. He stood before me where you stand and asked me for her. Knowing of your love, I forbade him. Now he defies me openly." Natanaka rose and I was overwhelmed by his presence, by the grim power which seemed to surge from his wasted bones.

"I am the Unclosing Eye!" he thundered in a voice like the crashing of waves upon the breakers. "I am holy, but I am a man, too! I feel outrage just as you! It is your place to defend her. It is your honor!"

When he had finished, the tremendous will which had kept me silent before him released its hold upon me and I raced from Natanaka's chamber, praying that I would be in time to save Kumi from Goro.

*****

In the dark chamber, the high priest seated himself and laughed with a gurgling sound like a dying man's death rattle. The Goblin looked into its master's face.

"Like starving vermin, my enemies fall upon one another. Ensure the gravity of their wounds."

The Goblin bowed low before its master and, like a giant frog, hopped after the departed Yamamoto, a golden blade in its gloved hand.

IV

Godzilla rose from the burning carcass of the castle, his tail battering the castle gates into rubble as he did so. Worse than the firestorm of Dresden, the heart of Hokkaido was rising into the smoke-filled sky as a single pillar of flame.

Godzilla roared and began to stride toward the unravaged outskirts of Hokkaido. Then, the giant froze. Dazed, Godzilla turned toward the source of his confusion. A single helicopter flew out of the smoke of Hokkaido. Godzilla slowly moved after the hovering aircraft.

"We have him, Commander!" yelled the helicopter pilot into his radio. Triumphant cries filled the command center as the report was broadcast.

"Good, now lead him back out to sea!" ordered Commander Aso.

The helicopter slowly retraced its path over the desiccated ruins of Hokkaido. Behind it followed Godzilla, ahead of it the sea.

*****

I burst into Kumi's room, my eyes clouded by rage. She lay upon the cold stone floor, her face bruised and blackened by the hands of her brutish attacker. Goro stood above her, looming over her like the Oni he so resembled, preparing to strike her yet another savage blow.

I did not wait for Goro to take notice of me, did not announce myself in some appeal for honorable combat. I fell upon the hulking cultist with the fury of a tiger. My fingers locked about his thick throat, his clammy flesh ice cold beneath my hands. Goro's fists pounded against my sides, tremendous blows which should have staggered a less frenzied man. I tightened my grip and fought down a feeling of disgust as the flesh beneath my fingers palpitated with a movement of its own.

Too late did Goro lock his mighty arms about my body in a crushing embrace, for even as he did his lungs were filled with hot, wasted air. His large hideous eyes were rolling into the top of his skull and his purple tongue lolled from his oversized mouth. I felt his bear-hug slacken and then his arms fell lifeless at his sides, but I did not release my grip upon him until I felt the flesh of his neck cease to quiver with life.

I looked at my hands as the hulking body fell to the floor. A yellow film was upon them, grease paint. Only the most liberal use of that cosmetic could have clothed the horror which had been Goro with a human visage, for upon his throat, where my hands had taken off the paint, were patches of pale green flesh. The palpitations I had felt beneath my strangle hold had been the fluttering of Goro's gills! Numb with horror, I lifted the sobbing form of Kumi Odaka from the floor and led her from the room which murder had visited.

Only Providence saved me from the blade that licked out from the darkness. An inch more and it should have struck me in the side of the heart. Yet it missed and I seized the wrist which gripped it and smashed it against the wall until the gloved hand dropped its golden dagger. Writhing in my grasp was the Goblin and as I clutched his arm, he brought up both his legs and delivered a kick which sent me hurtling backwards nearly ten feet down the corridor. At once he caught up the dropped dagger and, like a demonic toad, hopped at me.

I rose and met the dwarf's attack. His blade cut into my arm as I blocked his blow. My fist struck the cultist's face, stunning him. I again tore the knife from his hand and caught him about his mask. The disfigured dwarf struggled and, before I could guard against it, brought his powerful legs against my chest and kicked away from me.

I looked at the diminutive figure which hopped away down the dark corridor. In making its escape, the Goblin's mask had come off in my hand and for an instant I had beheld the features it had concealed, a face even less human than that of the dead Goro, a face akin to that of some horrible icthyoid, the face of a fish-toad!

My eyes found Kumi. She was shaking in terror. She, too, had seen the Goblin unmasked.

"Natanaka knows about me, about you as well, I imagine. Only he could have sent that thing after me! Maybe it was Hidemasa who told him about me, but however he found out; I have to run now before Natanaka's monster sends out the alarm! We have to get out of here!"

I raced down the corridor, pulling the still stunned Kumi behind me like some automaton. Then, I felt her hand leave mine and I stopped.

"I can't leave Kenji. I'm sorry Ryu, but I can't." There were tears in her eyes. Down the corridor I could hear the sounds of the alarm. The cultists would soon be upon us.

"Kumi, we have to go. I'll come back with the police and we'll get Kenji then." I could see the light of the cultists' torches at the far end of the corridor.

"I can't leave Kenji," Kumi repeated softly. Before I could stop her, she turned and ran back down the corridor toward the cultists. I told myself that she would be all right as I ran the other way. I would return, with half the police in Tokyo and that would be the last of Akira Natanaka and the Watchers on the Shore.

I was so very wrong.


	3. Part Three

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Godzilla vs. Cthulhu

By C. L. Werner

V

The operator of the sonic transmitter looked over his shoulder at the pilot and co-pilot of the helicopter.

"The big guy's following us like a trained dog", he remarked. Away and behind them the titan known as Godzilla continued to tread water, his reptilian face upturned toward the helicopter.

"That 'trained dog' just leveled Hokkaido and destroyed everything we could throw at it. Don't get cocky", snapped the pilot.

Suddenly, Godzilla stopped. The call had changed, no longer driving him irresistibly forward. Angered, the leviathan turned his eyes to the hovering helicopter.

"What's wrong?" cried the pilot. Behind him the sonic transmitter crew desperately tried to repair their machine.

"The damn thing just changed frequencies!" howled the machine's operator.

"Well, get it fixed before we lose Godzilla!" ordered the pilot. The co-pilot looked ahead and screamed.

"We're not going to lose him! He's coming to us!"

The crew of the sonic transmitter looked at the approaching monster and joined the co-pilot in his terror.

"Get us out of here!" one of them commanded the pilot. The pilot shook his head.

"No time."

"What do we do?" demanded a hysterical soldier. The pilot stared into the gaping maw of Godzilla as a glowing point of light grew in the back of the monster's throat.

"We die."

*****

I hugged the dumpster's trash-stained side, trying to become one with the metal. All about me I could hear the sounds of my pursuers. The entire cult was scouring the waterfront searching for me. No, more than the cult. Inhuman shapes had joined them, horrors from the sea. I watched the shadowy shapes of my hunters as they passed my hiding place in the darkness and cringed every time one of them hopped instead of running. The stench of fish filled my lungs even as the croaking voices of the cultists' allies filled my ears with the blasphemy of inhuman words from inhuman tongues.

I stole from the dumpster, making my way down a muddy alley from which a party of my hunters had already emerged. I hoped that my pursuers would not check areas that they had already searched, that by going where they had already been I could make my way to a nearby station house and escape. As I fled into the darkness, my eyes fell upon the mud and the tracks of my foes. I stared in horror at the single perfect print that found my gaze, the footprint of a mammoth frog.

My sudden horror nearly proved my undoing and it was only with seconds to spare that I came to my senses and ducked into the alley. Returning up the street, near enough that I could smell their torches over the icthyithic stench, was a group of cultists. I forced myself to look away as they passed lest I spy one of their inhuman allies and be overcome by fear. They passed without investigating my alley and I beat a hasty retreat out the alley's opposite end.

By degrees, creeping from darkened doorways and shadowy alleys, I made my way to a deserted fish market. A wide street lay before me, lit by the flickering neon of a bar sign. Music and laughter came from the building and I nearly laughed myself at the prospect of salvation among my fellow men.

Behind me came a bestial, gurgling snarl. Spinning about like a beast myself, I found the dwarfish form of the Goblin loping towards me with short hops punctuated by awkward and infrequent steps. His fishlike face glared at me, its green scales shining in the neon light. Its hands were uncovered now and I found them to be broad and fat with prodigious webbing between the fingers and in one was clutched either the Goblin's previous weapon or else its mate. The Goblin grinned a shark's smile at me, revealing rows of triangular teeth within its immense mouth. Fear seized me and I fled from the demonic apparition, a scream rising from my lips, unmindful of the other hunters my fright might draw to the chase.

I ran down alleyways, across streets and bridges, praying that I might escape this nighted, silent, sleeping labyrinth to enter the wholesome din and clatter of the living Tokyo. But the only sound that found my ears was the horrible plopping sound of the Goblin's feet as it hopped after me. At last, as my breath came hot and my lungs were infernos, I made a wrong turn and found myself in a blind alley. I heard the Goblin laugh as it beheld my situation.

Turning, I prepared to inflict as much damage upon my foe as I might when new sounds filled the night air. Shouts, gunshots and sirens! Somehow, in some way, as the American cinema would have it, the cavalry had arrived.

I saw the thought of flight enter the Goblin's batrachian eyes and saw that thought quickly pass. Nothing mattered to Natanaka's shadow now except the kill. The monster lunged at me, its knife biting into my leg. I stumbled backwards and struck the wall of the alley. I shook my head to fend off the darkness that threatened to overtake me, though even conscious I could not fend off the Goblin's next attack.

The Goblin grinned once more and seemed to coil its body like a lion preparing to pounce. As the batrachian dwarf launched itself at me, I managed to dodge to the side. The Goblin struck the wall with a sickening impact. As I sank to the litter-strewn mud at the creature's side, exhausted from my flight, I could see that the Goblin was dead, its gilled neck broken by its impact with the brick wall.

*****

I was soon found by a group of police officers, their first intention being to arrest me. I swiftly identified myself, however, and this changed their tone. They had been told to look for me. Several of the residents of the district had taken alarm at the large numbers of men racing through the streets in the dead of night and shouting in a strange language. One woman even said that she thought the Red Chinese had landed. But headquarters knew it had to be the Watchers on the Shore and that meant I was in trouble, so they dispatched every available man to the district. They were raiding the temple even as we were speaking.

Despite my wounds, I demanded to be taken to the temple and none of the officers dared to refuse me in this. Soon, I stood before Chief Inspector Minzo, my superior, in front of the temple of the cult. He was supervising the loading of several hundred prisoners into a number of police buses. Scores of wounded cultists were moaning in pain where they lay in the street. Dozens more were covered by tarps. Behind us, firefighters tried to douse the flames that threatened to engulf the temple. It looked like a war zone.

"Natanaka?" I asked as I saluted my superior. Minzo shook his head.

"Got away," he declared in anger.

"What about a Miss Kumi Odaka?" Inspector Minzo looked at me, puzzled. I was about to explain the question when I saw three bodies being removed from the temple. I knew each face. Take Hidemasa, Kenji Odaka, and, her face frozen in agony, Kumi Odaka, her throat slit ear to ear.

VI

We learned from eyewitnesses that Natanaka and a handful of his cultists had escaped out to sea. Though it was difficult to believe, their escape had been facilitated by means of a hydrofoil, the ship having been secreted in a hidden dock beneath the waterfront temple. Inspector Minzo immediately ordered the harbor patrol to intercept Natanaka's vessel while a police launch was dispatched to pick him and his men up. Again, no one dared to refuse my demands to pursue Natanaka.

The chill sea breeze was a contrast to the flames of rage that burned inside me. Natanaka had murdered Kumi Odaka, the girl I loved, and I would not rest until I knew that his withered heart beat no more.

I was mad with the lust for revenge. I hurled curses upon the crew of the launch for not spurring the boat to greater speeds. I spat anethemas upon the dark waters which I fancied clutched at our ship to slow it, as though the very sea were conspiring with Natanaka. I checked the revolver Minzo had handed me, counting the bullets and snapping the cylinder back in place only to open it again and recount the bullets. That each would find a home in Natanaka's skeletal frame was a vow I repeated over and over to myself.

Up ahead there were lights upon the dark waters. I could see the harbor patrol boats. They had blocked Natanaka's hydrofoil, kept it from reaching the open sea. I wept tears of joy as the launches slowly advanced upon the high priest's ship.

But the fiend still had cards he had not played. I could see Natanaka standing upon the deck of his ship, his green robes whipping about him in a breeze that had become a wind. In his clawlike hands was an orb of jet black, a tarlike substance which writhed in his hands with a life of its own and borne upon us by the sea wind was the wizard's incantation, his appeal to unwholesome forces of prehistoric aeons:

_"Ia, ia, Cthulhu nafl'fhtgn! Nafl'fhtgn mg R'lyeh! Ia, ia, Cthulhu fhtgn! Shoggoth mgllfwig!"_

Then the wind died and there was perfect silence, a spine-chilling, mind-numbing silence of expectancy - the quiet before the storm.

The waters did not boil or churn, they simply slipped away as the thing broke the surface. God! To think such a thing lie unknown and unguessed in the very shadow of Tokyo, sleeping in waters where the very fish we ate were caught!

It was enormous! A great black expanse of formlessness struggling to take shape, a jet black usurper of the very waters about the ships of Natanaka and the harbor patrol. The ship lights lent illumination to the horror which the sorcerer had summoned and upon its black surface I saw eyes and mouths of all sizes opening and closing, their movements altering their very shapes. I watched as the black horror grew hands and claws and tentacles of darkness only to absorb them back into its chaotic substance! It was a protean nightmare, a blob of madness as large as several city blocks! But worst of all, from its ever-changing legion of mouths came a hideous, liquid, sloshing choir which repeated the guttural incantation of Akira Natanaka!

I have since learned that the monster was a shoggoth, a horror so foul that even the accursed author of the thrice-damned _Necronomicon_, the Mad Arab Abdul Alhazred, desperately insisted that their kind had been exterminated from the Earth. They had been created in Earth's prehistory by the alien Elder Things as a race of slaves. But their creations evolved past their expectations and the shoggoths destroyed their masters' empire when they sloughed the chains of servitude. Now, one of these things had answered the Unclosing Eye's call.

The shoggoth attacked the launches in silence, only the screams of its victims scarred the night air. Some boats it sucked into itself, as though a great hand had grabbed the ship from below and pulled it beneath the black surface. Others it surrounded with great waves of its substance only to bring all the waves crashing inward at the last instant, obliterating the trapped ship. Still others it pulled apart with tentacles of blackness laden with eyes and mouths, dragging screaming men into its black mass. One boat it devoured with a titanic mouth that was many yards across. But Natanaka's hydrofoil it bore across its seething form to lie unharmed upon the waters beyond the perishing police ships. As the last of the launches was absorbed into the shoggoth's squamous body, Natanaka's ship sped into the limitless horizon of the Pacific. I was still watching his retreating ship when a frenzied voice screamed in my ear. I still don't know who said it, perhaps I did, but the observation had been made - the shoggoth was coming for us!

Suddenly our launch was swamped by a tremendous wave as a gargantuan form emerged from the deep waters off our starboard. Our cheers were drowned out by the monster's mighty roar as the reptilian titan glared in disapproval at the shoggoth, even as the horror slithered across the waves. We cheered as Godzilla swam forwards to engage the formless abomination of prehistoric blasphemy. Before the alien horror of the shoggoth, Godzilla was the lesser of evils and we prayed for his victory.

That is, those whom sight of the shoggoth had left sane. 


	4. Part Four

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Godzilla vs. Cthulhu

By C. L. Werner

VII

Godzilla snarled in defiance, being startled when the countless mouths of the shoggoth attempted to mimic the sound in a maddening chorus. Angered, the great reptile spat radioactive death at the shoggoth. The protean horror writhed in pain as its black substance sloughed away where the atomic fire had scorched it. Now it was the shoggoth which was angered.

The amoebalike creature reared up into the sky, a pillar of flesh, legions of eyes staring into those of Godzilla, score of mouths snapping in rage. Before Godzilla could act, the black pillar toppled, falling upon Godzilla, covering him in a blanket of living darkness. The observers upon the fleeing police launch could see Godzilla struggling beneath the mass of eyes and mouths as though the reptile were a dog trapped beneath a sheet.

Godzilla's brain screamed in pain, his lungs fought for air. Hundreds of mouths tore into his scaly hide. As Godzilla opened his mouth in a bid to fill his lungs, the shoggoth's formless substance rushed into his throat, filling it completely. Godzilla's movements were becoming slower, his struggles less fierce. Soon, he would be dead and the shoggoth would absorb the reptile's body.

Late night revellers in Yokohama were startled by the brilliant flash which flickered briefly in far-off Tokyo Bay. They could not know that it was the final ploy of a dying monster. His very lungs filling with the biting mass of the shoggoth, Godzilla unchained the nuclear fury of his giant frame. Atomic energy erupted from his hide in a brilliant pulse of radioactive annihilation. The shoggoth, its age older than the shores of Japan, found death in that pulse, its black mass shattered like glass, hurled in a hundred directions like lifeless chunks of jelly to drift upon the waves until the morning sun evaporated their alien substance.

Godzilla did not roar in triumph. Even a victory cry was beyond his torn and weakened body. The battle with the shoggoth had been swift but terrible. Like a weary child, Godzilla sank into the depths to sleep and heal.

*****

Hours after Natanaka's escape, I was summoned to an emergency meeting of the JSDF and "top men" from the United States. So urgent was my presence required that the doctors had to finish tending my wounds in the car on the way to the meeting.

I recognised many of the Japanese seated at the oval table in the long meeting hall from news footage of the war to stop Godzilla. The Americans, however, presented a curious assemblage of military and civilian personnel. Director Serizawa of the UNGCC rose and introduced me to the assembled men. A studious-looking American then rose and, through a translator, questioned me about my investigation of the Watchers on the Shore. I surprised him by answering in English. When I had finished recounting Natanaka's escape and the battle in the bay, it was my turn to ask questions.

"Sir," I said, "I have answered all of your questions, please answer some of mine."

"I think that is a reasonable request," replied the American much to the chagrin of the general seated at his side.

"First, who are you and what is your business with Natanaka? I gather that Take Hidemasa was one of your men?"

"Indeed he was. Had he not been murdered, we wouldn't need your report, Detective Yamamoto. As for who we are, the U. S. government has been aware of the tremendous evil which threatens to annihilate all human life on this planet for some time. The Miskatonic Project is dedicated to combating that evil wherever it manifests itself. Our victories are small, amounting to little more than sticking our fingers in the dike, but we have, if not actually defeated that evil, then at least we have prevented deranged madmen from awakening that evil prematurely. Mankind is still here and the Great Old Ones still sleep thanks to our efforts."

"What are these 'Great Old Ones', Doctor…"

"Ashtree, my name is Ashtree, but it is Professor, not Doctor. As for the Great Old Ones, that is a broad label placed upon monstrous alien entities of colossal power who ruled the Earth before even the dinosaurs were born. Climactic changes, opposing aliens, or perhaps even the shifting of distant stars caused these beings to be forced into hibernation until conditions would again be favourable for them."

"And what is the connection of these Great Old Ones to Akira Natanaka?"

"Let me answer that question with one of my own. Did you ever hear Natanaka invoke the name 'Cthulhu'?"

A shudder passed through my body as I heard the horrible guttural slither from Professor Ashtree's tongue. I had heard that inhuman name once before. It had featured in the incantation Natanaka had used to summon the shoggoth in his hour of need. Professor Ashtree continued after I had told him this.

"Natanaka's 'Lord of Dreams' was no less than Cthulhu. The sorcerer was too crafty to openly flaunt the nature of his cult's god, but there can be no question. Your testimony, the statements of the more rational cultists who have been captured and … other factors confirm this." Professor Ashtree paused, as though trying to decide whether I should hear what he would say. After a moment, he opened a briefcase that had rested by the side of his chair and took from it a large packet of mimeographed pages.

"This is a copy of a very ancient book which is held in a locked room of the library of Arkham's Miskatonic University. The original is far too dangerous to travel abroad, so I take with me an abridged copy." Professor Ashtree removed a pair of antique reading spectacles from his vest and began to read:

__

"That is not dead which can eternal lie.

"And with strange eons, even death may die."

"The Mad Arab Abdul Alhazred wrote those words centuries ago in a tome blasphemous knowledge posterity has handed down to us as the _Necronomicon_. They refer to Great Cthulhu; mightiest of the Old Ones imprisoned on Earth, the foul god of Natanaka and thousands of madmen like him.

"Before life as we know it had begun, before the moon had been torn from our world, Cthulhu and his spawn seeped down from the heavens and conquered a vast continent in what is now the Pacific Ocean. With their super science they reared up the black city of R'lyeh and were the lords of the Earth. But something went wrong and their mighty empire was claimed in the cataclysm which reshaped the Earth into the world we know. The waters came and Cthulhu's empire sank beneath the waves. He and his titanic spawn drowned with the black towers of R'lyeh. Drowned, but not dead, only dreaming.

"That is how the foulness of Mighty Cthulhu has haunted mankind down through the ages like a plague. Asleep within his sunken crypt, Cthulhu dreams and his dreams rise up through the fathoms. They seek out the dreams of men, devour them and replace them. His dreams force writers to pen tales of horror, artists to paint obscenities. And, those who cannot so purge the horror that their sleeping minds have absorbed embrace it in acts of barbarism or rituals of worship, worship of this obscene sender of visions. In time, those who continue to share the dreams of Great Cthulhu invariably go mad, for how can a human mind hold the dreams of a being so advanced that we can only imagine it as a god. Try to imagine an ant suddenly possessing the knowledge to construct a rocket ship. The knowledge is so far beyond the insect that it cannot hope to understand it. That is what it is like to share Cthulhu's dreams, for beside the science of his kind, man is less than an ant. Through the ages twisted geniuses have half understood the knowledge they have gained and we have called the advances these men have made employing that knowledge 'magic' or go mad ourselves.

"We have known of Cthulhu for a long time. Miskatonic University has investigated the doings of the Great Old Ones' twisted worshippers since the 1920's. In 1928 the government of the United States became aware of the old gods who share our world with us in their slumber. It was in that year that federal agents raided the New England fishing village of Innsmouth and discovered horror. The people of the village were worshippers of Great Cthulhu and had mixed their blood with that of Cthulhu's aquatic slaves, the Deep Ones, for generations. You have perhaps seen these loathsome hybrids, half-human, half-merman. Moshida village has been mixing its blood with the Deep Ones for centuries. Perhaps you even saw some of the Deep Ones themselves aiding Natanaka's cultists in their hunt?

"Since the early 1940's, Miskatonic University joined the government's investigation of the lingering influence of the Great Old Ones in what is now the Miskatonic Project. And we have dreaded this day.

We know that R'lyeh rises from the ocean floor on certain occasions and that on these occasions Great Cthulhu is free. R'lyeh sinks back into the depths shortly after it rises, taking Cthulhu with it. But one day, it will not return to the deep and on that day mankind will cease to be master of the Earth. We know that R'lyeh has risen again, insanity has been spreading like a plague across the world, telling us that Cthulhu is no longer buried beneath fathoms of water.

"All across the world the cultists have prepared for this day. Their leaders board ships grand and poor to make the pilgrimage to R'lyeh, to awaken Great Cthulhu with their prayers. Natanaka will be among them and where Natanaka goes, so goes the micro-transmitter our man Hidemasa placed in the sorcerer's food before he was killed. We will know where R'lyeh is, where Cthulhu will awaken. But the question remains, what to do if he does not go back to sleep?"

Professor Ashtree let his words linger in the air like an icy mist. After several minutes of silence, Commander Aso spoke.

"Have nuclear weapons been considered? He asked reluctantly. The American general seated opposite him replied.

"In 1953 we conducted an H-bomb 'test' on a small island in Micronesia. Our object was to destroy the crypt of one of Cthulhu's spawn which had been discovered on the island. The crypt was completely disintegrated, vaporised, but the monster inside was unharmed and, fortunately, not awakened. Nuclear weapons are as useless as spit balls against these beings!"

Suddenly an idea came to me. I remembered the hideous shoggoth and its battle with Godzilla and I remembered that it was Godzilla who had won that battle.

"Why not lure Godzilla to Cthulhu's island? Let the monsters battle one another and pray that it is Godzilla who emerges victorious." There was a murmur of hushed discussion as I finished making my proposal.

"Your idea is daring, Detective, but it is the only one we have," Professor Ashtree lamented.

"We can lure Godzilla to the island with a sonic transmitter," Commander Aso offered. "I can have a helicopter equipped within the hour."


	5. Part Five - Cthulhu awakens!

****

Godzilla vs. Cthulhu

By C. L. Werner

VIII

Godzilla was slow in rising from the bottom of Tokyo Bay in answer to our sonic summons. Perhaps even his amazing regenerative powers had not fully healed the wounds dealt him the previous night by Natanaka's shoggoth. But rise he did, staring in evident distaste at our hovering aircraft.

I had insisted on accompanying the helicopter crew. I said that since it was I who had suggested using Godzilla against Cthulhu that it should be I who shared in the risks of leading the titan to his eldritch foe. But, in truth, I had a less noble reason for being on that helicopter and that reason was Akira Natanaka.

As we led Godzilla out of Tokyo Bay into the green waters of the Pacific, I thought of the old sorcerer. It was on R'lyeh that Natanaka had seen Cthulhu, he alone of his battalion had been spared by the monster-god, though Professor Ashtree had assured me that Cthulhu was beyond actually seeking a man's death, for we were too insignificant to catch his notice.

Natanaka had lived and the others had died. Now Natanaka was returning to R'lyeh and I was determined that he would find the death which should have found him over fifty years ago.

Below us, Godzilla's wet scales gleamed in the morning sun. It was late afternoon when we sighted the mists of R'lyeh.

The island-city of R'lyeh was shrouded from the outside world by a thick bank of grey fog. Was that veil to protect R'lyeh from the eyes of men or to protect the eyes of men from the hideous throne of the masters of an older world? As we led Godzilla into the dense clinging mist, the monster snarled in anger. Godzilla could sense the alien horror which lay so near.

An overwhelming dread clutched at the heart of every man aboard the helicopter as we passed through the grey mists and sighted the nightmarish expanse of R'lyeh!

It covered an area easily the size of Tokyo and Yokohama combined, with the tops of towers and pillars rising from the ocean in every direction, mute evidence of the inconceivable immensity of the cyclopean city which yet lay beneath the sea. What had risen from the deep was a vast expanse of gently sloping blue stone upon which had been reared a host of titanic structures whose size was in the thousands rather than the hundreds of feet, loathsome towers, pyramids, and ziggurats of black stone whose spires reached out in all directions, whose shape was of such alien angles that the strange idea came to me that they had been constructed in four dimensions.

All about the shore was docked an anarchic flotilla of ships, all sizes and shapes, from commercial freighters to yachts to primitive fishing canoes and catamarans. I sighted amidst this chaotic fleet Natanaka's hydrofoil and a sense of triumph filled me, steadying me against the horror of R'lyeh's inhuman architecture.

At the very centre of R'lyeh was a barren space, within which rose a hill of blue stone. Upon this hill, its black surface covered like the rest of R'lyeh with dead and dying sea creatures caught in the island's surfacing, stood a great crypt, two enormous metal doors forming the crypt's face, before which a host of tiny figures danced and prayed and offered sacrifices - the gathered worshippers of Cthulhu.

And, though the concealing mists fought against what seemed a prematurely dying sun and what light passed through was discoloured a loathsome grey, I fancied that I spied an antlike figure bowing before the great doors. An ant wearing a jade green robe.

*****

A sound like the roar of kettle drums thundered through the black expanse of R'lyeh, echoing from the walls of strange towers, their alien angles seeming to capture the sound and only reluctantly releasing it, causing the echoes to degenerate into a discordant din. Screams of mad exultation rose from the worshippers of Cthulhu as the mammoth doors of the crypt slid away, sinking into the vacuity of the tomb at a bizarre and unnatural angle. The roaring sound died away as the cultists slowly advanced upon the enormous opening of the black crypt, gaping like the maw of some deadly beast, all was silence.

His malignancy preceded him like a stench of alien places and cosmic abysses. Even the feeble light allowed to seep through the obscuring mists seemed to darken at his approach. In utter silence a pair of huge yellow eyes burned from the darkness of the crypt, burning with a cold, alien intelligence. Great Cthulhu had awakened.

The Lord of R'lyeh did not stride from his tomb but in a shapeless flood of green flesh _oozed _through the opening of the crypt, crushing the closest of his worshippers beneath his tremendous mass. Slowly, as it passed through the doorway, Mighty Cthulhu's form took shape, growing ever larger as more and more of his gigantic body emerged from the crypt in a rolling, writhing stream. When at last Great Cthulhu had fully emerged from his prison, his titanic form towered over the now small and insignificant structure; a structure so small compared to the primordial demon that it seemed impossible that it could ever have contained his enormous mass.

He was huge, a living mountain of pale green flesh. His shape was that of a giant, his legs as similar to pillars as the limbs of a toad. His arms were long and thin in comparison to the legs and the great hands ended in lengthy, clawed fingers. From his back sprouted two titanic wings of a distinctly reptilian nature. Atop his shoulders Great Cthulhu's head was the noseless, oval shape of an octopus, a legion of tentacles writhing from his face like a living beard. Two huge yellow eyes stared at the mist-shrouded sky from above the writhing mass of tentacles.

Mighty Cthulhu spread his arms and wings wide, his face tentacles reached into the sky and from his giant body came a trumpeting bellow of triumph, an ear-piercing gurgle which seemed to crawl across the world and which R'lyeh's black towers dared not echo.

Great Cthulhu was again free!


	6. Part Six - Finale

****

Godzilla vs. Cthulhu

By C. L. Werner

IX

Godzilla's reptilian eyes stared suspiciously at the black megaliths which surrounded him as the behemoth slowly climbed the muddy shore of R'lyeh. He roared in fury at one of the massive structures which blocked his path, towering above him at an incredible height many times Godzilla's own titanic enormity. When the tower did not move, did not react to Godzilla's challenge, the reptile slowly walked around its alien symmetry, his eyes still glaring in suspicion, ready for the first sign of aggression from the cosmic evil he sensed all about him.

Upon the hill, Great Cthulhu continued to exult in his freedom, an emotion less passionate than a man should have felt, an emotion more resigned than rejoicing. The immense mountain of rubbery green flesh pulsed with an inner light, a blue luminescence which slowly spread across the monster-god's entire shape, transforming Cthulhu's hide into an electric blue colour, an unearthly hue of such beauty as to be incompatible with the hellish form it cloaked. Great Cthulhu took a few awkward, lumbering steps away from the hill, trampling scattered handfuls of cultists into jelly with the oblivious indifference of a man whose path takes him over an anthill.

Then, the sea-god froze, his blue colour rapidly fading back to green, his face tentacles reaching forward, tasting the air.

Godzilla emerged from the labyrinth of R'lyeh's cyclopean streets with the closest his reptilian mind could come to relief. The alien city's colossal towers had oppressed even Godzilla's savage spirit, yet the sense of cosmic evil had grown rather than lessened as the titan had come closer to leaving R'lyeh's vaults behind. Now, there was a great empty space before him. Ahead was a hill and a giant crypt and…

Godzilla was a primal force, an engine of carnage and destruction. Hideous obscenities of science and nature had fought him and he had not wavered; only a primitive rage had filled his reptilian heart. Yet now, as Godzilla's eyes found the ancient horror that stood before him, the monster shrieked in terror and took several steps backwards. Horror crawled across Godzilla's spine, fear gnawed at his brain for the first time in his awful existence. The miasma of timelessness, the stench of the galaxy's unfathomed limits, seemed to exude from Mighty Cthulhu's flesh, filling even Godzilla with a sense of blasphemy and dread.

Great Cthulhu's yellow crescents stared at Godzilla for only a moment. The monster-god was unconcerned at the approach of this reptilian behemoth; merely curious in the most detached of manners. It was not one of Cthulhu's brood nor was it any such creature as had settled upon the dim ages when Cthulhu's empire had ruled the Earth. Only in his dreams could the Great Old One identify the strange creature that trembled in his presence - it was one of the insignificant beasts which had evolved in the aeons since R'lyeh's sinking. Strange that it was so large, almost as large as him, but not a cause for alarm. Unconcerned, Great Cthulhu again stretched his wings and slowly, like a great bloated bat, rose into the silver sky.

Godzilla's instincts screamed for him to flee, to fly in the face of this cosmic malignancy from the pits of time. But something within the monster was awakened by this fear and Godzilla's cold-blooded heart seethed with rage. The plates that marched down the reptile's back crackled with an eerie blue light as his head lifted towards the sky as Mighty Cthulhu rose into the air.

Radioactive fire tore through Cthulhu's left wing blasting a jagged hole through the thick, mudlike flesh. With a howl like the low-pitched whine of a radio signal, the primordial god fell from the sky. When he struck the surface of R'lyeh, it was as though Cthulhu were a titanic ball of clay, his lower body being distorted and flattened by the impact while the rest remained intact and unharmed. Almost as soon as he struck the ground, Great Cthulhu's body began to restore itself to its proper form, like a piece of stretched rubber snapping back into shape. More of the Great Old One's rubbery flesh oozed across the damaged wing to fill and repair the tattered hole.

Cthulhu's hide was rapidly changing from its green hue to a burning red brilliancy, a shade which heralded anger even upon the black star from which Cthulhu's spawn had seeped to the Earth. Before Godzilla could react, Cthulhu's wings rapidly shrank, their substance being redirected to Cthulhu's arms, arms that now shot across hundreds of yards to encircle Godzilla's body in a crushing embrace.

Like mammoth pythons, Cthulhu's thin, powerful limbs constricted about Godzilla's body, crushing the breath from the reptile's lungs. Already their colour was fading back to green and the alien intellect behind them was again unconcerned with the behemoth in his grasp. It was only when Godzilla's fire sundered his tentacle-like arms that Great Cthulhu recalled the strange Earth-creature that had distracted him. The severed arms oozed lifelessly from Godzilla's body even as Cthulhu formed new ones. It was almost without feeling that Cthulhu's eyes looked past Godzilla's own, sending out psychic feelers which probed and poked in the monster's very brain.

Godzilla was less than a hundred yards from Cthulhu when the monstrous alien discovered what he wished within Godzilla's network of nerves and ganglia. Genetic codes, messages and limitations hidden within the atomic dragon's DNA lie before Cthulhu's gaze like an open book. From Cthulhu's form there came a cry which assaulted the very core of Godzilla's nervous system like a high-pitched sound wave. The great beast gave but a single shriek of pain as he toppled upon the blue rocks, stunned by the mental and physical assault.

Cthulhu turned from Godzilla's prostrate form, again deeming the fallen monster unworthy of his attention. But from every crevice, from the alien angles of R'lyeh's black towers, poured a tide of nightmarish shapes very much interested in the fallen giant. Like monstrous Lilliputians, crustacean denizens of earth's forgotten prehistory and the gibbering scum which seeped from the heavens beside Great Cthulhu's spawn scrambled, scuttled, oozed and crawled across the blue rock and the black scales. After aeons of hibernation, centuries of living death, one thought filled the small primitive minds of the horde - hunger. With claws and mandibles, talons and tentacles, teeth and digestive enzymes, the vermin of R'lyeh set about devouring the great beast felled by R'lyeh's master.

Pain filled Godzilla, raced through every nerve, rooting out the echoes of Mighty Cthulhu's sonic assault. Godzilla rose from the blue stone and clay, shaking screaming creatures twice the size of men from him and crushing them beneath his feet in all their legion forms. Godzilla roared his challenge at the bloated, hulking horror that had shown such contempt for him as to leave his destruction in the claws and feelers of such filth.

Great Cthulhu was surprised that the reptile had fought off the Great Old One's attack upon Godzilla's mind. Certainly it should have crippled the beast, there was nothing in its genetic codes to indicate otherwise. The monster was so enraged that he was not employing his flame but striding nearer to rend Cthulhu's flesh with his fangs and claws. The Great Old One easily recognised Godzilla's intent and Cthulhu's facial tentacles began to gyrate in maddening patterns and colours, the mechanics of an act of super science, the solving of a riddle of the physical universe that mankind would call wizardry in his terror.

The blue stone at Godzilla's feet began to ooze between the reptile's toes. A few steps more and it ceased to support Godzilla's mass. Like an elephant in quicksand, Godzilla began to sink into the solid rock whose cohesion Cthulhu's magic had destroyed.

Cthulhu continued about his own affairs and a great malevolent cry rolled across R'lyeh. Within every tower and pyramid, obelisk and ziggurat, that call was answered. Doors closed for countless millennia opened and the first of Cthulhu's mammoth spawn strode forth into the eerie half-light, an army of creatures smaller than their god-priest-emperor but otherwise sharing his fearsome visage. They joined their grim lord in the vast psychic effort which Great Cthulhu was undertaking, the raising of the vast amount of black R'lyeh which lay yet beneath the waves. But the god had again dismissed his adversary too soon.

Godzilla fought against the nearly liquid stone to no avail and continued to swiftly sink. Bestial rage flared up within him as never before. Unable to retaliate upon the morass that held him, Godzilla's gaze fell upon the immense bulk of Mighty Cthulhu. Atomic energy crackled about Godzilla's back as the monster spat golden fire into Cthulhu's obese and bloated body, blowing a great gaping hole through Cthulhu's chest.

Although the wound began to be filled and repaired almost as soon as it had been dealt, the effect of Godzilla's attack had been tremendous. Cthulhu abandoned his followers' efforts to raise R'lyeh further from the deep, causing the island to retreat back into the waves. As Cthulhu's spawn watched the approaching waters nervously, Cthulhu himself looked upon the trapped Godzilla with sudden concern. The reptile's assault had hurt him, even if his alien body was already beginning to repair the damage. With the pain from Godzilla's attack had come the inconceivable realisation that this creature, this insignificant beast, had such power that it had the potential to kill even Great Cthulhu. However remote the possibility, it was not a possibility Cthulhu would allow to be tempted.

The Great Old One threw open his arms even as Godzilla's fire burned through the monster-god's midsection. Great Cthulhu was sending up a cry, an inaudible summons to the very core of the universe. Cthulhu was calling upon a power which even he, perhaps, would be unable to control, a power which would annihilate his foe utterly. But, as the shrouding mists of R'lyeh parted in answer to Great Cthulhu's demands, alien eyes beheld the now revealed and naked night sky.

The spawn of Cthulhu slowly returned to their myriad tombs, their brief freedom at an end while the waters of the Pacific greedily devoured the shore of R'lyeh. Great Cthulhu ceased to call upon the dark power of the Outer Gods but turned and strode back to his crypt upon the hill. He ignored the golden fire that burned his wings as he oozed back into the timeless darkness of his black tomb. And, as Cthulhu retreated, the stone about Godzilla hardened slowly, allowing the monster to emerge from the Great Old One's trap. As the water rose to Godzilla's thighs, the reptile glared at the yellow eyes that considered him from the depths of Cthulhu's crypt before cyclopean doors shut out their gaze.

The stars were not right, Cthulhu and his spawns' time was not now. And so, for an hour or an aeon, R'lyeh sank back into the darkness of the sea and Cthulhu sank back into his black slumber and dreamed.

*****

I alone survived from the crew of the helicopter. When Cthulhu emerged from his crypt, the others were driven mad at the sight of him. The pilots gibbered idiotically at one another while the operators of the sonic transmitter fell upon each other with maniacal ferocity. I leapt from the helicopter to escape her crew of maniacs, seeing the aircraft explode against one of the black towers of R'lyeh only moments after I struck the water.

I was rescued hours later, cold and exhausted, by one of the search planes sent to find us by the Americans. Even had the helicopter not been destroyed, it did not have enough fuel to return after having led Godzilla to fabled R'lyeh.

I did not see their battle, but I can only deduce that Godzilla defeated Cthulhu since mankind's civilization yet thrives. A victory for the new gods of man's own making. But I know that Great Cthulhu still lives, so it was but a temporary victory.

Today I am head of Japan's own investigative program to combat the minions of the Great Old Ones. It is called the Odaka Foundation.

Akira Natanaka has not been seen since R'lyeh's return to the depths. It can only be assumed that he perished beneath his god's feet or drowned with R'lyeh's sinking.

Perhaps it is only coincidence, but Godzilla did not long survive his battle with Mighty Cthulhu. The uranium deposits of Birth Island somehow became unstable, causing the entire island to explode and saturating Godzilla with such vast amounts of radiation as to prove lethal even to him. I wonder if Great Cthulhu's dark dreams had anything to do with it. I do wonder…


End file.
